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Saturday, 22 September 2012

Less, is the best way to make more

I love solving problems. I tend to be attracted to some of the more complex challenges which require carefully crafted solutions. The trouble is that carefully crafted solutions take time, often lots of time. And often, the more time you spend on something without reaching tangible achievements, the less likely you are to finish the project.

Recently I had a lot on my plate - a full time job with a number of large projects that I wanted to complete, a wedding to prepare for, an idea for a software product that was going nowhere fast, and a number of issues in my personal life that all added up to a big ball of stress. My then fiancee stumbled across a book "How to live on 24 hours a day" by Arnold Bennet which she recommended I read. I downloaded the ebook for free from Project Gutenberg. Although it was written 100 years ago, it's one of the best books on time management I've ever read. He has a lot of tips on how make more time for yourself but the overriding philosophy is this:

Many people fail by trying to do too much. So do much less, and it will accumulate into much more.

It took some time to get my head around how I would implement this. But once I understood, I stopped a number of projects I was working on, inside and outside my day job, a focussed on only the most important. And those important projects were scaled back. A lot. The result? Less stress and more productivity. Arnold Bennet you are a genius.